Our first afternoon and evening on the Big Island saw us eat lunch at Kona Grill House, do some grocery shopping and settle into our rental. The next morning we woke up bright and early (being on Los Angeles time) and headed out to Volcanoes National Park. It was about an hour and a half drive and we arrived shortly after the park opened. I wasn’t really sure what to expect but the park is utterly amazing. We spent the morning and afternoon walking along several trails and in between we got lunch at the Volcano House. The Volcano House is a historic hotel situated not too far from the Kilauea crater—the crater rim trail passes the restaurant in the rear—and has a restaurant that is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner (closing in between—check hours before going). It’s located very close to the Visitor Center. Reservations are required for dinner but lunch—at least going by our experience—is far less busy. The view can’t be beat and the food is quite creditable too. Continue reading →

We left for Los Angeles in early-mid June and after a week or so there headed off to Hawaii for about two weeks. We spent most of a week on the Big Island and another on Kauai. I will spare you the rest of our vacation stories—we hiked, snorkeled, lounged on beaches and visited museums and botanical gardens—and tell you only about the food we ate. This was a very different vacation for us as none of it revolved around food. There were no specific restaurants we were aiming to eat at and none of our days were constructed with eating in mind: on all days we ate where we happened to be or picked up food on the way back from where we’d spent the day to where we were spending our nights. Nonetheless, we ate quite well. And it turned out that Hawaii is a very easy place to eat with our kids, as grilled or stewed meat with rice is almost universally available. There were two constants across our holiday: we consumed a lot of shave ice and god, did I eat a lot of poke. I may as well get these reports started with our very first meal on the Big Island, eaten just an hour or so after we picked up our bags at the airport. Continue reading →